


Ninja Work for Beginners

by SlowMercury



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, Ninja, Police, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 09:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18797293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury
Summary: Uchiha Tokimi helps her daughter Uzume with her new genin team.





	Ninja Work for Beginners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pepperdoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/gifts).



Uchiha Tokimi seriously considered violating her oaths to her clan, her village and her own ideals twice over the course of her career as a Konoha military police officer.

 

The first time she considered it, Tokimi was an Academy graduate approximately a month and a half into her first dayshift rotation.  Most of the police work she’d done up to then was Konoha security, which for rookies mainly meant standing around by the village gates looking extra conspicuous, handling petty crimes like shoplifting, and crowd control at the New Years festival. 

Her first domestic disturbance case was very different.

Afterwards, Tokimi’s patrol partner, Uchiha Renjiro, reminded her that there was very little that the Konoha Military Police could do if a domestic violence victim refused to testify against a clanmate, and couldn’t or wouldn’t leave them. 

Tokimi went home that night and thought very carefully about her duties, her oath to protect all citizens of Konoha including those she didn’t like, and her belief in the law.  She weighed that with the memory of flat, hopeless eyes, a bruise in a shape of a handprint, and the likely consequences of both action and inaction.

In the end, Tokimi did not attempt to murder the suspect, and not simply because she was unlikely to succeed at killing a jounin.  If the police themselves did not try to uphold the law, well, then there was really no point in bothering to have law at all, was there?  Instead, Tokimi and Renjiro did an extremely thorough investigation that bordered on stalking and eventually brought the suspect in on unrelated charges.

 

The second time that Tokimi considered breaking her oath as an Uchiha MP happened nearly twenty years later, at breakfast four days after her daughter Uzume was assigned her genin team.

Uzume had been uncharacteristically subdued since her first team meeting.  Tokimi had intended to wait awhile for things to settle before prying too hard into her daughter’s business – Uzume was a genin and an official adult now, even if she was only nine, and Tokimi had to remember to respect that.  Uzume had also been placed on the same team as Hyuuga Amano, her Academy rival, and it could be difficult sometimes to transition from rivals to teammates.  One of the most important lessons genin had to learn was how to work together with people they might not like, or whose personalities they clashed with.

Tokimi looked again at her unnaturally quiet daughter, picking listlessly at her rice. 

Another important lesson for genin to learn was how to ask for help when they needed it.  Tokimi wouldn’t force anything, but maybe she could encourage Uzume. 

“Uzume, is there anything you want to discuss?”

Uzume froze for a moment, staring down at her plate.  Then she took a deep, shuddering breath and met her mother’s eyes squarely.

“Mom,” Uzume asked, “do you think I’m a failure because I’m an Uchiha and I suck at genjutsu?”

“No,” Tokimi replied simply.  “What brought this on?”  Uzume had always been an Uchiha, and had always been bad at genjutsu, which was one of the Uchiha Clan’s traditional strengths, but it had never occurred to her daughter to doubt herself before.  Someone had planted this idea.

“My jounin-sensei, Yuuhi Shinku, he…” Uzume’s voice trailed off, then she gulped and continued more strongly.  “The first day of team training, he showed me how to do a really easy beginner version of the Chameleon Camouflage genjutsu.  When I couldn’t get it down, he said that I was disappointing and a bad Uchiha.”

“What else did he say?”  Perhaps it was an attempt reverse psychology; some jounin-sensei preferred to motivate their students that way.  If this was reverse psychology, though, it had backfired badly.  Usually Uzume delighted in defying others’ expectations of her, but this time the challenge seemed to have gutted her instead of lighting the spark of competition.

“Yuuhi-sensei told us that he was unlucky in what students he got, and that we’re hardly worth the effort of teaching.  He said that Aburame Shibi was all right, because Shibi’s a Clan heir and was near the top of our Academy class, but that Amano is never going to be good for anything except basic guard duty, because Amano’s just a Hyuuga branch member.  He said that I won’t even be good for that, because I’m female, and I’m even not good at genjutsu so I won’t be worth anything in the field.  He said the only career I can have is if the Uchiha Military Police decide to take pity on me and keep me in the village.”

How _dare_ he.  How _dare_ this Yuuhi Shinku say that to Uzume.

Her vision was sharply focused, Tokimi noticed; she must have accidentally activated her Sharingan from sheer rage.  Tokimi closed her eyes, took a deep breath and returned her sight to normal. 

The cold anger at the sheer presumptuous gall of the man remained.  Uzume was _wonderful_.  Tokimi’s daughter was strong and brash and relentless when she had a goal.  Even if her genjutsu was subpar, she was vicious at taijutsu and a budding prodigy with a sword.  The Uchiha Clan was _lucky_ to have such an excellent child as a member of their clan and no outsider had any business claiming otherwise.

Tokimi wasn’t a fresh genin anymore.  She had years of experience with the police, several of which she spent on the homicide squad; she knew police investigation techniques forwards and backwards.  It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to dispose of Uzume’s sensei and make it look like an accident.  Surely Konoha couldn’t assign such an awful teacher twice in a row.

…Wait, no.  Even if she was skilled to handle the practicalities of murdering people these days, all those other, moral reasons why murder was wrong and illegal still applied so Tokimi still couldn’t just kill this Yuuhi Shinku. 

Tokimi took another deep breath to calm herself. 

“Your jounin-sensei is an imbecile,” Tokimi said.  She kept her voice calm and buried the ice she felt under the surface of her words.  “I don’t doubt that this Yuuhi has some ability at something; he may even be gifted or innovative in his own field.  You see that, occasionally.  Some people know one or two topics very well and cannot function outside of their area of expertise.  It is unfortunate that your jounin-sensei is one of these people.”

Uzume stared at her mother with astonished eyes slowly widening with manic glee.  “Mom,” she said.  “Mom!  Are _you_ telling me not to listen to my teacher?”

Tokimi paused.  “Yes and no,” she said.  “Listen to him and learn from him on the topics he knows, but also understand that you will not otherwise be able to rely on his teachings.  He is also your superior officer, and you must treat him accordingly.”

“Okay,” Uzume said.  “I can _definitely_ not listen to my teacher!” 

Well, that wasn’t the ideal takeaway from this, but Tokimi could accept it in exchange for Uzume rekindling her fighting spirit.

“I will have to be more involved with your training than we planned for after your graduation to genin,” Tokimi said seriously, and her daughter nodded.  “Since your team placement has proven to be deficient, I’m going to personally whip you into shape so you make chunin as quickly as possible.” 

Uzume looked like she didn’t know whether to be pleased, frightened or annoyed about this.  More training was always good, Tokimi knew, but Uzume might not appreciate the chance to be regularly beaten up by her own mother.  That could get embarrassing. 

 

Tokimi and Uzume met for their first training session at The Pit that afternoon, after the new team’s D-rank weeding mission finished.  There was also an unexpected addition.

“Mom, this is Hyuuga Amano,” Uzume pointed almost defiantly at a small, neatly dressed boy with a hitai-ate wrapped around his left arm.  “His mom’s dead and his dad’s out of the village on a long term mission so he doesn’t have anyone to practice with, so he’s going to train with us.  Amano, this is my mom, Uchiha Tokimi, she’s a police officer.”

Amano bowed and murmured a polite greeting.  He appeared calm on the surface, but more careful inspection revealed that his hands and body stance were tense.  He understood what a big favor Uzume was demanding; it was very rare for the Uchiha to train people from outside the clan, and even rarer for Uchiha to train Hyuuga, the Uchiha clan’s traditional rival.  Amano expected Tokimi to kick him out, possibly literally, but he was desperate enough to try asking her for help anyway.

Tokimi looked at him for a long moment.  She probably _should_ throw him out, but he was her daughter’s Academy rival turned teammate.  Amano was a brand new genin, and his teacher had said horrible things to him, too, just like the teacher had said to Uzume. 

“Get in The Pit, kids,” Tokimi ordered.  “You two have a lot of work ahead of you if you’re going to grow into ninja who can force this Yuuhi Shinku _eat his words_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you like this; I wasn't sure I got the characterizations right, but I did try. I ended up liking Tokimi quite a bit, and I hope she (and Uzume and Amano) are at least somewhat true to your vision of them.
> 
> Initially, I had more detail about Tokimi's first domestic violence case but then I remembered that you specifically wanted light hearted for this prompt. I hope this is good enough!


End file.
